Guest Gulkan: the Yarglat barbarian otherwise known as the
Weaponmaster. Under the compulsion of hubristic ambition, he has
dared his way into the Temple of Blood. There he has liberated the
Great God Jocasta. By way of reward, he expected to be given the
powers of the wizard. Instead, the Great God has taken possession
of him. His father, the Witchlord Onosh, lies at his feet. And
Guest is poised to kill his father. He does not want to, but he
cannot help himself!

                                                 * * *

        So there was Guest, about to slaughter his father, when with
a whoosh a high-pressure flood of saliva came barrel-bursting from
the cornucopia, knocking him down and rolling him over and over
till he ended up in a thrashing heap against the temple wall. The
Great God Jocasta lost control of Guest's body, for its
contortions were too quick to be followed by the God's mechanism
of control - and Guest abruptly found himself free.
        Free from possession, Guest fought through a swiftly-rising
flood-rush of foaming spittle, grappled with the pumping
cornucopia, and brought it to the upright, thus cutting off the
outflow of his father's spit - which otherwise would surely have
continued pumping until it had digested the world.
        This was no sooner done than Guest realized that the Great
God Jocasta was moving in on Lord Onosh, humming ominously.
        "Run!" said Guest.
        But, even as he said it, a voice of thunder roared in
outraged anger:
        "HALT!"
        Guest momentarily thought it was the Great God Jocasta
speaking, but it was not.
        "HALT!" roared the wrath-thundering challenger. "HALT! THROW
DOWN YOUR SWORD! OR YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED!"
        For a moment, Guest was all confusion, then he saw the
challenger who owned that voice which mountains would surely have
envied. The loud-mouthed challenger was a woman who was dressed in
an armor fashioned from the same painfully bright blue
transparency which had imprisoned the Great God Jocasta.
        Guest had never seen this woman before, but he had heard the
odd snippet of news about Obooloo while he had been incarcerated
in the Mutilator's dungeons - and knew enough to surmise (with
absolute accuracy, as it happened) that this was none other than
Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood.
        Stogirov had a weapon in her hand, a weapon of contorted
metal which ended in a nozzle tipped with white light. Guest had
barely caught sight of it when it spat flame.
        The firebolt which jolted from Stogirov's alien weapon
slammed into the Great God Jocasta. That blast of raw energy
struck the Great God, sending the free-floating thing crashing
backwards. The Great God was sent slamming into the rearward wall.
It caromed off the blank-faced stone, tumbled through the air,
then steadied itself.
        The Great God spat fire at Stogirov, who ducked.
        She ducked too slowly!
        She was hit!
        But not vaporised - for her armor absorbed the fireshock.
Stogirov coolly leveled her own weapon and returned the Great
God's fire.
        Guest acted.
        He grabbed his father, who was in no condition for
independent heroics, then he slung the unconscious man over his
shoulder like a sack of severed heads and positively sprinted from
the central courtyard.
        Behind him, Stogirov and the Great God engaged in a firefight
which the Great God lost - for Stogirov's weaponpower was greater.
So Jocasta followed Guest Gulkan's lead and fled, exiting from the
Temple of Blood in the wake of the Witchlord-burdened
Weaponmaster.
        "COME BACK, YOU!" said Stogirov, firing yet once again at the
retreating Great God.
        The echoes of the amplified boom of Stogirov's voice died
away, to be replaced by the truncheon-beat of her boots trampling
over the heat-cracked rock as she moved in the pursuit of the
fast-fleeing Great God. Out of the Temple of Blood went Anaconda
Stogirov - out of the temple and into the streets of Obooloo.
        Guest Gulkan most naturally fled up Lobdoptiskop, that narrow
street which winds its way uphill in the shadow of Achaptipop, the
massive rock which sustains the Sanctuary of the Bondsman's Guild.
Up that street he labored, sweating under the burden of his
father's weight. Then that burden began to gasp and croak. Hoping
that if Lord Onosh was well enough to complain then he might be
well enough to walk, Guest dumped the man down.
        Panting and sweating, Guest Gulkan turned. And looked
downhill. And saw. He saw a floating doughnut, which he knew
immediately to be the Great God Jocasta. And in pursuit of that
doughnut was a figure bulbous in blue-burning armor - the
wrathful Anaconda Stogirov, High Priestess of the Temple of Blood!
Guest, in his supreme innocence, had thought those two would
happily spend the rest of the day fighting it out in the temple.
        "Grief of gods!" said Lord Onosh, staggering to his feet.
"There's no way out for us now!"
        But Guest still had the cornucopia.
        Nearby was a cow which was fortuitously lifting its tail. As
a great gush of urine gouted from its backside, Guest filled the
cornucopia. Then he upended that horn of plenty. A limitless surge
of bovine urine slammed forth from the cornucopia like a spout of
water erupting from a hole at the base of a mighty dam.
        In moments, the plunging street of Lopdoptiskop was being
pillaged by a flood of drenching urine. Anaconda Stogirov clutched
at a doorway but was knocked away. With a scream, she was swept
downhill, vanishing in the millrace of the cow's multiplied
bounty. But the Great God Jocasta floated clear of the jouncing
flood.
        Guest abruptly brought the cornucopia upright. He held it
firmly upright, to let the horn of plenty swallow what urine
remained within it. Guest stowed the cornucopia, then father and
son hurried on up the street to gain the gateway of the Sanctuary
of the Bondsman's Guild.
        "You can't come in here!" said a guard, addressing the pair
in the Janjuladoola tongue, which language neither of them spoke.
        Whereupon Guest Gulkan knocked him unconscious, and hurried
into the Sanctuary with his father in his wake.
        To penetrate the precincts of the Sanctuary had been easy,
but to get into its Holy of Holies was (theoretically) rather more
difficult. For that Holy of Holies was guarded by a jade-green
block of stone, a block of stone which ate people who had not
permission to pass. This monster was of course the demon Lob (in
whose honor the street of Lobdoptiskop had been named).
        Lob was but one of the far-scattered demons loyal to the
Great God Jocasta, and of course Lob was under the impression that
Guest Gulkan had set himself the task of rescuing that Great God.
So when Lob saw Guest approaching with Jocasta bobbing along
behind, why, Lob naturally thought that Guest had fulfilled his
mission of rescue (as he had) and that the Weaponmaster was now
Jocasta's beloved friend (or slave).
        So the man-eating demon let Witchlord and Weaponmaster pass,
unwounded and unrestrained, and so they entered into the Holy of
Holies where the Door of the Bondsman's Guild was kept safe from
all prying eyes.
        There was the Door!
        The gate to the Circle of the Partnership Banks!
        In all his life, Guest had seldom been so relieved as he was
when he saw that metal archway standing on its marble plinth, and
confirmed that the span of the archway was filled with a screen of
shimmering, hard-humming silver.
        In front of that archway stood a Banker, and he did not look
happy to see Witchlord and Weaponmaster intruding on his domains.
He held up a single finger in a gesture of admonition. The Great
God Jocasta fired a bolt of energy at the Banker, and it burnt off
that upraised finger. The Banker looked at the roastmeat scar
where his missing digit had been but a moment earlier, then he
fainted clean away. He fell face forward. There was a solid crunch
as his face smashed into the marble of the plinth, teeth
splintering, jaw breaking.
        Remorselessly, the Great God glided through the air toward
the humming silver screen.
        "No!" shouted Guest, horrorstruck.
        But it was far too late for protest.
        For the Great God slipped through that screen and was gone.
        It had escaped! It had got away from Obooloo, going through
the Door to - why, to Dalar ken Halvar, of course! For Dalar ken
Halvar was the next place on the Circle of the Partnership Banks.
        Witchlord and Weaponmaster did not hesitate. They scrambled
up onto the plinth and hurried through the humming screen of
vertical quicksilver, arriving instantly in the Bralsh, the Bank
of Dalar ken Halvar. In the Bralsh there was a smell of scorched
flesh and a scene of panic-stricken disarray. The Great God
Jocasta was briefly glimpsed - vanishing out of the main exit.
        "Guest Gulkan!"
        So cried Yubi Das Finger, the leading Banker of the Bralsh.
But Guest had no time to spare for idle conversation. Instead,
Witchlord and Weaponmaster charged from the Bralsh, striving out
into the hot sun of Dalar ken Halvar. Precisely what they hoped to
accomplish is a mystery, for surely they must have known
themselves to be unequal to the powers of a Great God.
        But charge they did.
        And got out into the streets of Childa Go, the fishing
quarter of Dalar ken Halvar. There the Great God lurched to a
halt, and turned to confront them. And, to his horror, Guest
Gulkan felt his mind again slipping into the possession of his
enemy.